News

On November 26, 2011, Jim Naughton of The Observer posted an article reacting to Facebook co-creator Mark Zuckerberg’s declaration that email communication is a dying format. Three days later, an ABC News article, “Tech Firm Implements Employee ‘Zero Email’ Policy” seemed to validate Zuckerberg’s claim. As Naughton aptly observes, “The average employee now-adays receives something like 100 email messages a

The Utah State Archives and Records Service will relocate the State Records Center from the warehouse in West Valley (Decker Lake) to a new State owned facility in Clearfield. This move is scheduled to begin on February 1, 2012 and will take an estimated 4 weeks to complete.   In order to facilitate this move, some services will be temporarily

Information professionals have centuries of experience working with records on paper, and have developed effective practices for controlling these records. Yet, we have only a couple of decades of experience actively managing electronic records. As a profession records managers are engaging the unique challenges of this radically new format and are developing approaches to efficiently manage e-records.     In

When it comes time to schedule records with the Utah State Archives and Records Service there may be some confusion about general retention schedules. What are general schedules? What purpose do they serve? How do I use a general schedule? ARMA International defines a retention schedule as: “A comprehensive list of records series, indicating for each the length of time it is

       Some of Utah’s cultural heritage custodians met with first responders and disaster planners at the Utah Alliance for Response forum on November 2, to discuss actions that can be taken to protect  records and other cultural heritage artifacts in the event of a disaster. Planners hope that the outcome of this forum will be the creation of partnerships and strengthened communication between

     Have you ever wondered how in the world you would reduce your backlog?  Or how you would complete a project that you never find time for?      Maybe what you need are volunteers to assist you.      If you have ever thought about how to find volunteers and how to keep them coming back, we have a training session

Records managers can learn from zombies. A general observation about zombie behavior: Zombies wander aimlessly. They lack direction or the ability to plan ahead. Zombies do not exhibit signs of motivation until they see one of the living. If a zombie meets a person they then stumble and charge to get to their next meal, often hurting themselves in the process. Similarly, records management

With more than 15 references to the term “personal” in the Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA), it comes as no surprise that Utah governmental agencies struggle to apply the term to the records managed by their office. GRAMA references:  “personal use,” “personal privacy,” “personal notes,” and more. Yet, there is no definition provided by the law to guide

On September 22nd I attended the Intermountain eDiscovery 2011 conference in Salt Lake City. At the conference Ralph C. Losey, of Jackson Lewis LLP, discussed the challenges and latest solutions to electronic discovery. Three significant points were: 1) If you “reasonably” expect litigation, then you must stop all records destruction; 2) In Manhattan it is considered gross negligence if an IT

The Utah State Archives is pleased to announce the 2012 training dates. It will be an exciting year for training as we introduce two new workshops: “What’s In Those Cabinets: Tackling the Records Inventory and Appraisal Process” and “Essential Records Protection and Disaster Recovery.” Participants of these workshops will begin the process of inventorying in-office records, create a standardized rubric